What If ‘House of Cards’ Season Three Had Ended Like The Original British Series?

Warning: Contains spoilers for both the British and the American versions of House of Cards.

When the second season of House of Cards premiered last February, eager fans of the series were stunned when, at the end of the first episode, Vice President Frank Underwood threw the scrappy, snooping Washington reporter Zoe Barnes in front of a subway car. It was a bold move, killing off a major character at the beginning of a second season, but those who had seen the original trilogy of miniseries, the first of which premiered on the BBC in 1990, probably knew what was coming. After all, at the end of the first series’ fourth episode (the original series were each just four episodes long — TAKE NOTE, BEAU WILLIMON), Parliament member Francis Urquhart throws young reporter Mattie Storin off the roof of the Houses of Parliament.

It’s not as intense as poor Kate Mara being tossed in front of a Metro train, but you have to give it to the Brits for their sophisticated sense of humour, I guess:

(One other key detail about the British series that didn’t make it to the American version: Mattie Storin’s Electra complex. Yes, she calls Urquhart “Daddy” before he tosses her off that roof. What if someone on this show called Kevin Spacey that? That’s a hard pass.)

There are a lot of other major differences between the original series and the Netflix remake. Take, for example, Urquhart’s wife, Elizabeth:

Can you imagine Robin Wright wearing that hat? And you thought the two-episode arc in which her “natural” hair color showed up this season was shocking. Just picture her with a fascinator perched on her head, feathers and tulle just floating up there. No thank you!

But of all the differences between the British trilogy and the three seasons on Netflix is the ending. Now, the original series, based on books by Conservative politician Michael Dobbs (who wrote the two sequels to House of Cards, titled To Play the King and The Final Cut, following the success of the BBC program), was a trilogy — meaning it had a hard ending. At the end of the third series, Elizabeth Urquhart has her husband assassinated in order to protect his legacy as Prime Minister and to protect her own interests by allowing her to afford to retire.

Can you imagine if the third season of the Netflix series, after all of that fighting with the faux-Vladimir Putin and Underwood almost boning the Franzenian novelist he hired to write propaganda about America Works, if Claire had shot that son of a bitch right there in the White House instead of announcing her plans to leave him? That would have made for a phenomenal ending, and the chance for Claire to step up and take control of the power she feels she deserves.